I thought Prey was great. The level design was fantastic and the game as a whole is much more open-ended than Bioshock or Dishonored. It heavily encourages and rewards exploration so if you enjoy that, Prey is a no brainer.

Slick wrote on May 10, 2017, 03:57:Still the best engine, the best FPS hit detection, the best a lot of things. The main game modes are getting dull as fuck for me after playing the same shit for 15 years, but going to Battlegrounds is just painful trying to aim, shoot, or have your hits reg. Say what you will about BF1, the underlying technology is the high bar for FPS games.

This may be the most frustrating part of all. After DICE LA massively cleaned up the mess than was the launch of BF4, the game evolved into a very tight shooter for it's scale, to this day it's still the most fluid and fun large-scale multiplayer FPS by a large margin. BF1 is a technical marvel on many levels, visuals, audio design, netcode performance among other things. If only they put the same amount of thought into the game and level design. With some fresh ideas, the franchise could really be given a breath of fresh air given the technology they have.

I think EA will likely make a Battle Royale game after seeing PUBG's success. I say bring it on, a little competition can't hurt.

I wouldn't be so sure. They never jumped onto the survival sandbox bandwagon and this is essentially just a variation of that. Also, neither genre has been a proven success on consoles yet.

Would be nice to see actual sales figures for ME:A compared to the previous games.

ME:A had the same issues as DA:I. Too much focus on scale, not enough on quality. Bioware is really bad at open-world design and ME:A would have been better off if they made it a 40 hour game instead of a 100+ hour game. It would have been far more polished and free from the burden of half-assed filler.

Uh, X-ray vision in Quake is straight up broken. Predicting where your opponents are going to be is a fundamental part of Quake deathmatch and this guy doesn't need to predict anything because he can see through walls.

I wouldn't put too much weight on Steam reviews. While handy, they represent less than 5% of all people who own any given game. It's quite literally the vocal minority. Steam reviews are often swayed by politics and things that have nothing to do with the game itself. HITMAN got a lot of negative reviews because of its episodic format and Square's questionable marketing, even though the game itself is the best in the series. Torment: Tides of Numenera got negative reviews because some stretch goals from the Kickstarter didn't come to fruition. Then you have negative reviews from people who have played a game for over 300 hours and argue that the game sucks because it gets boring after 280 hours.

Professional reviews tend to be more representative of the overall player base. Mostly casual gamers who go into games blind and don't invest hundreds of hours into them.

eRe4s3r wrote on May 1, 2017, 00:23:Btw, I don't really agree that the genre needs a hiatus, but what I would happily agree is that after DoW 2, they should have picked a direction for this and go with it, but instead they made something that somehow manages to piss both fan groups (DoW1 and DoW2 fans)

And as I said before, I really really enjoyed the DoW 2 gameplay... if they had given DoW 3 some advanced random mission system, and maybe a bit deeper roleplaying with a better loot system that is deeply ingrained in the lore of Wh40k I'd have been extremely happy. I have not touched MP in a RTS since SC2, and I don't intend to ever do that. And in SC2 I only play coop.

Except your description of the ideal DoW3 isn't an RTS. It's essentially squad-based Diablo (which is what many DoW fans disliked about DoW2). If another DoW does get made, I wouldn't be surprised to see it commit to that direction because the traditional RTS genre seems just about dead.

At this point, I'm not sure what it would take to rejuvenate the RTS genre without changing it completely like MOBAs did. It's not like there's been a lack of good RTS games in recent years. It's just that nobody seems to care about them anymore.

But on the other hand, this makes me really really sad, because it means DoW3 may be the death of the series.

The game's been out for 3 days. Bit premature to call it a flop. I don't think SteamSpy can even collate accurate numbers within 3 days. Give it a month and check again.

If the game does flop, it may be the final nail in the coffin for traditional RTSes. Starcraft 2, CoH2 and pretty much every RTS released in the past 10 years has sold below expectations. Developers have made attempts to update the genre to make it more appealing to modern audiences but all that does is piss off older fans. Conversely, if they stick to tradition, the customer base is too small to justify rising development costs.

It might be time for the RTS to go into hibernation for a decade or so and then make a resurgence like CRPGs have.

Prez wrote on Apr 27, 2017, 23:00:The head-scratching decision to call this game "Prey" aside, it looks like it has the potential to be good. Waiting for reviews/Let's Plays.

Their insistence to call this game "Prey" reminds when MS insisted that the FPS game be called "Shadowrun" when, in fact, it was nothing like the original. Shadowrun, while a decent MP game, failed due to labeling a well loved IP something that should never have been. Unless Prey is something amazing, I predict its imminent failure as well.

That's not a good analogy at all. Shadowrun was an established IP before the FPS was released. In addition, it was an established RPG series. As such, there were a lot of expectations attached to the name and a multiplayer FPS was not one of them.

There was one Prey game before this one and it wasn't exactly a big critical or commercial hit. The vast majority of potential players have neither played nor heard of the original game. Even if you have, both games still belong to the same genre (FPS) so that's already a much smaller leap than your Shadowrun example.

People really give too much weight to the Prey name. It's not even remotely as relevant as they seem to think.

MeanJim wrote on Apr 28, 2017, 19:35:Isn't that the Bethesda formula? Create an unrelated game that could stand on its own, but instead they buy a popular IP and slap its name on it and basically ruin both.

It's not really a formula if there's only one questionable example of it (Fallout). You're also conveniently forgetting that Interplay was already ruining the Fallout brand long before Bethesda bought it. Remember Fallout Tactics? How about Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel? Or the canceled Van Buren? Or Fallout Online? Bethesda's purchase of the IP resulted in New Vegas, which is a far better outcome than anything Interplay was doing with the series.

djrxmx wrote on Apr 27, 2017, 23:39:Also, there wasn't one game play feature that sparked my interest---it was total "been there before, nothing new" content. 35 minutes into a game provides plenty of time to show something innovative and creative, neither of which took place during the play and scenery. Really sad there are some developers out their lacking in innovative vision.

Really? How many games let you morph into environmental objects and then use your newfound form to open up traversal or stealth opportunities? How many games let you shoot projectiles that solidify and can be used to incapacitate enemies or create platforms? And these are just the two features that have been shown off frequently.

ViRGE wrote on Apr 27, 2017, 22:12:I'm actually a bit surprised the recommended specs are only a GTX 970. That's the equivalent of a $200 video card these days. It's surprisingly affordable.

Prey is essentially a corridor shooter, so I wouldn't expect it to be very demanding. Still weird that they're using CryEngine instead of Bethesda's own id Tech 6 but I'm guessing development started before id Tech 6 was ready.

Hope this is true. Really enjoyed the first one, though they probably could have improved the pacing a bit. Also, once you get the flamethrower, the Alien becomes nothing more than a minor nuisance. I've heard complaints about the Alien AI but I didn't really have any issues with it. The key is to keep moving. You should only stay still long enough to find your next safe spot. As soon as you see an opening, get moving. If you stay in one place for too long, you will be found.

I'm a big fan of stealth, survival horror and Alien so Alien Isolation was a perfect fit for me.

If a game is designed for multiple playthroughs, I think it's fine. It was basically impossible to experience all of the content of Dead Rising 1 or 2 on the first playthrough so a second playthrough still felt fresh and interesting. Also, almost every rogue-like is designed for multiple playthroughs.

I don't know how fresh a second or third playthrough of NieR feels but I don't think the idea is inherently bad. Now, if the only meaningful difference between the playthroughs is the ending, that's problematic.

Rigs wrote on Apr 20, 2017, 03:02:The way I see it is this...the reason people are so...meh...on this game is that it really hasn't been explained to us. Who's the protagonist? Who's the antagonist? Why? Why here? What makes this station so important? They've given us small tidbits but they're expecting us to find out everything within the game, which is fine for an established IP and series, but not really for a new one. Take a look at Alien: Isolation, which I've been getting major vibes from when I see anything to do with Prey. I kinda overdosed on A:O backstory and 'lore', especially about the setting itself. So when we get another space station being invaded by nasty ol' aliens, I'm just kinda like...huh. I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. And before A:O, we had Dead Space (especially 2), before that, System Shock 2 (though not technically on a station). So at this point a game about fighting bad guys on an abandoned space station is getting a little stale unless the devs come up with a good reason why we should care. Is this whole 'Mimic' thing a reason? I can't really tell, to be honest. I haven't seen enough of it. I don't know enough about the setting or the bad guys. With A:O, you know the setting, you know the alien. With Dead Space 2, you knew the bad guys, the space station, while pretty to look at, was really just background window dressing. Here, we know nothing. So after a Conga-line of similar titles, how can one be expected to be excited about another one without knowing why?

Figuring out these things is kind of a big part of the game, I assume. Just like in the original Dead Space or System Shock. I've avoided almost all of the story trailers because discovering these things is part of what makes the story interesting.

Also, "Conga-line" is a big of an exaggeration. There are relatively few AAA games that take place on space stations.